The strangers embarked again on the next day, and the cannon of Montreal greeted them as they landed before the town. A great quantity of evergreen boughs had been gathered for their use, and of these they made their wigwams outside the palisades. Before the opening of the grand council, a multitude of questions must be settled, jealousies soothed, and complaints answered. Callières had no peace. He was busied for a week in giving audience to the deputies. There was one question which agitated them all, and threatened to rekindle the war. Kondiaronk, the Rat, the foremost man among all the allied tribes, gave utterance to the general feeling: "My father, you told us last autumn to bring you all the Iroquois prisoners in our hands. We have obeyed, and brought them. Now let us see if the Iroquois have also obeyed, and brought you our people whom they captured during the war. If they have done so, they are sincere; if not, they are false. But I know that they have not brought them. I told you last year that it was better that they should bring heir prisoners first. You see now how it is, and how they have deceived us." The complaint was just, and the situation became critical. The Iroquois deputies were invited to explain themselves. They stalked into the council-room with their usual haughty composure, and readily promised to surrender the prisoners in future, but offered no hostages for their good faith. The Rat, who had counselled his own and other tribes to bring their Iroquois captives to Montreal, was excessively mortified at finding himself duped. He came to a later meeting, when this and other matters were to be discussed; but he was so weakened by fever that he could not stand. An armchair was brought him; and, seated in it, he harangued the assembly for two hours, amid a deep silence, broken only by ejaculations of approval from his Indian hearers. When the meeting ended, he was completely exhausted; and, being carried in his chair to the hospital, he died about midnight. He was a great loss to the French; for, though he had caused the massacre of La Chine, his services of late years had been invaluable. In spite of his unlucky name, he was one of the ablest North American Indians on record, as appears by his remarkable influence over many tribes, and by the respect, not to say admiration, of his French contemporaries.